MLB should go 54 games
Can still crown legit champion
Ashorter season won’t compromise the legitimacy of whatever Major League Baseball team wins the World Series. All the teams will play the same number of games and have the same opportunity of surviving and advancing in the postseason. It’s a little puzzling to hear so much grousing about the legitimacy of a season that has fewer games than half the full 162game schedule.
Only one thing can lend an air of illegitimacy to a shortened season and that’s a second spring training that doesn’t last long enough. Most conversations have centered on a three-week summer training period preceding the start of the 2020 baseball season. Crazy.
If that happens, orthopedic surgeons will be so busy they’ll attain enough wealth to buy their very own baseball franchises. In normal times, the opening months of a season following a full spring training puts pitchers at more risk of surgery than later months. The only reason for six-week spring training periods is to build up pitchers so that they don’t blow out their arms. Cutting the preparation time in half creates way too much risk, especially considering that a lot of pitchers will lie to their employers about how much limbering and throwing they did during the coronavirus lockdown.
Think: longer preseason and shorter regular season. Think: 54game schedule.
That ought to be short enough for the owners to at least break even once the postseason TV money is earned. Pay the players their fully prorated salaries, which amounts to exactly one-third the money they were going to earn for a 162-game schedule.
The symmetry of a 54-game schedule makes it easy for salary arbitration hearings as well. Just triple the statistics.
The clock just about has expired on hopes for a proposed 82-game season. Those discussions involved six five-team divisions. Forget that. Three 10-team divisions, based purely on geography with no regard for league affiliation, works better for a 54-game schedule. All games are played with a designated hitter and each team plays its entire schedule against the rest of the teams in the division. The math works out perfectly. You play every team in your division in a threegame home series and a threegame road series.
In some ways, a season that short could draw in new baseball fans. It’s so much easier to hang in there and follow the standings for two months than for six. It brings far more teams into the races for playoff spots. Even a lousy team is capable of a hot streak and those who get off to hot starts can hang in there long enough to fool their fans into their patience finally being rewarded. Underdogs would have a legitimate shot, a nice boost for TV ratings for teams typically ignored by the time August arrives.
The Red Sox don’t have a starting rotation fit for competing over the course of 162 games, but they have three times as good a chance of staving off implosion for 54 games. Playing all games within the division will also mean more games ending before midnight, local time.
Back in April, when the idea of three 10-team divisions was being discussed, here’s how those divisions shaped up:
East: Orioles, Red Sox, Marlins, Mets, Yankees, Phillies, Pirates, Rays, Blue Jays, Nationals.
Central: Braves, Cubs, White Sox, Reds, Indians, Tigers, Royals, Brewers, Twins, Cardinals.
West: Diamondbacks, Rockies, Astros, Angels, Dodgers, A’s, Padres, Giants, Mariners, Rangers.
Expand the playoffs and put the extra revenue from the expansion into a pot for the players. Hope that the stale environment of games played in empty stadiums doesn’t translate fully to TV.
If a 54-game season sounds like a win for the owners, it probably is, which would even the score since the players already landed a major victory in getting owners to agree to grant the players the service time for a full season, which puts players a year closer to the rewards of salary arbitration and free agency.
Again, the only way to turn a shortened season into a joke is to try to microwave the training period that precedes it. There aren’t enough major league-caliber pitchers to stock 30 rosters as it is. A breakout of sore arms is the last thing the sport needs for the short term and the long term.